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Joining The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search Could Win You A Lot Of Money

November 18, 2015

Written byCuriosity Staff

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As of 2015, the GIMPS project has identified the top 10 largest prime numbers known to man. It combines the power of thousands of computers from volunteers across the world, all of which run programs that are designed to calculate huge prime numbers. The largest prime number ever discovered was found by the project in 2013, and is more than 17 million digits long-bigger than a googol! GIMPS participants have won the last two EFF awards: $50,000 for a prime number with at least 1 million decimal digits, and $100,000 for a prime number with at least 10 million decimal digits.